Massive Star VY Canis Majoris – Polarized Light

About the colours

This image is a composite of many separate exposures made by the ACS instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope using several different filters. Three filters were used to sample various wavelength ranges in each instrument. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Cyan: F550M (V) + POL0V Yellow: F550M(V) + POL60V Red: F550M(V) + POL120V

About the data

The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposals: 7304 : R. Humphreys, K. Davidson, T. Jones, and R. Gehrz (University of Minnesota) and J. Krautter and T. Szeifert (Landessternwarte, Heidelberg) 10262 : R. Humphreys and T. Jones (University of Minnesota), G. Herbig (University of Hawaii), and G. Wallerstein (University of Washington).